


Running on Backwards

by Zebooboo



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Anxiety, But not the way you expected, Crimson Days, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, letting others care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22940203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zebooboo/pseuds/Zebooboo
Summary: Sometimes the Crimson Days are not about celebrating a bond, but affirming an old one and remembering to care for it.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Running on Backwards

**Author's Note:**

> people asked for my OCs  
> here you go~
> 
> NOTES  
> 1 - circa, ending of Season of Dawn, spoilers ahoy.  
> 2 - Feros and Schala are not together 'romantically'.  
> 3 - *lights cig* Timeline? Haven't heard that name in a long time...

He hesitates before knocking on the door. As always with everything nowadays. 

Mia nudges his helmet again and Feros transmats it off irritably. He hasn’t taken it off in far too long, he's forgotten about it. Too long on the Moon with only the Hive and dead people to keep him company. He pulls down his hood for good measure and raps his knuckles on the door before he loses his nerve. 

He looks back at the tiny yard as he waits, it’s overgrown but lush and the house is far enough from the closest plaza to be quiet. He can see why Schala picked it to live in when she’s in the City. Which is most of the time, considering her teaching position. 

The door opens with a click and he’s met with Schala’s brightening eyes. He’s hardly raised a hand before her arms are wrapped around him tightly, face buried in his chest. 

The tension bleeds out of him all at once and he pulls the smaller exo close, “Hey firefly. Sorry I’m late.” 

\--- 

She makes tea and coffee and sits across the table. Feros appreciates her not keeping up the physical contact for long, that she doesn’t care about keeping physical contact for long. He was never comfortable with it and now he’s been for too long with too little. 

“I met Saint in the Hangar, he’s...more subdued than I remember.” He starts talking haltingly when the silence starts stretching too much. When Schala keeps looking at him with that soft gaze for too long and he can’t handle being cared for just yet. 

She blinks slowly, unlacing her hands from under her chin and does a so-so motion with her palm. _"He can be a handful, but he is nice. Checks in every day.”_   
  
Feros nods, he’s missed quite a lot of things since they stormed the Black Garden, chief among them the return of Saint-14 by Schala’s hand. The thought of her getting stranded in the Corridors of Time has him grinding his jaw, anxiety eating at him. She sips at her drink, relaxed, if a little distracted. But that’s the norm, normal is good for them. Normal means nothing major is happening; no invasions, no unmitigable disaster bearing down on them, no unknown threats creeping behind their backs. 

No more deaths following in their wake. 

“And you?” His voice coder hitches. Schala looks back up at him, her lips twitch in a smile and she signs, _“I live in a haunted house and don’t have any new Guardians to teach, but Saint comes by for breakfast in the mornings and that irritates Eli, I’m fine.”_

Feros blinks, runs that over again in his head. His jaw drops. 

“Haunted house?”, he glances superstitiously around the room, then down at his cup of coffee, fully expecting it to start floating. 

Schala’s glitchy laugh settle his nerves just a bit. _“I think I keep finding all the Guardians doomed by the Vex. I’m not too sure yet about these ones' stories yet.”_

He opens his mouth, closes it, covers his face with his hand. He almost believed they could get away with some peace, but of course not. His shoulders slump in defeat. 

A hand tags the fingers away from his eyes, Schala holding it gingerly. It bothers him for a reason other than the actual contact. 

“I am safe. Nothing is attacking. Osiris and Saint are fixing things. We are safe” Her scratchy voice is low, rough and the best thing he’s heard in months and years. He feels some kind of strain snap and Feros is holding her small hand in both of his, keening and trembling and his mind is a storm of thoughts running amok. 

They’re Guardians, they’re never fine and they certainly aren’t going to stay safe, no matter what happens. Today may be fine, but next week? Next month? Next year? She’ll get caught up in something he can’t help with and something will go wrong and he'll lose her, same as everyone.

Optimism wants him to think back on all the other times she never needed him and realism says it’s only a matter of time, better off he’s not there to see her suffer. 

_“But I’m not gone yet, so stay?”_

It’s whispered so low he thinks he might have imagined it, but Schala is looking back at him carefully, with Void lacing their fingers together. His jaw quivers and clenches, he hates it when it passes his thoughts to her. 

Their hands start warming up with Schala’s Solar warmth and he chokes on despair and grief. Not for the first time, Feros-8 wishes he could cry. 

Schala rounds the table and wraps her arms around his shoulders. He leans against her, holding her close. 

Cayde is gone, but he’s still got people. Shiro is alive, distant and tired, but alive. Saladin has given him space and time, if not his approval. Even Drifter is good enough in a pinch, he’s already part of the man's crew, one of too few. Even if the man’s leering about Feros finally picking up the Dredgen name grates incessantly. And dear, dear bright Schala. He’s just not been ready to move on. He still feels like he’s running madly through the Prison of Elders. 

He thought returning to the Moon would at least give him an outlet, but the dark corridors gave him nothing but more pain and nightmares. Eris had tried to talk to him once, maybe twice, but he hadn’t been ready to listen. Only Omar’s whispered glee had come close to breaking through, if only because vengeance spoke more to his battered psyche than any letter or creed Shin thought he held dear. 

Fingers traced over the patterns on his skull, tracing Light into grooves and down his neck. It’s soothing, familiar and the trembling slowly subsides, thoughts slowing to a grinding halt and he _breathes._

“Stay. It’s quiet, you can rest.” 

He nods against her shoulder. Rest sounds good, quiet sounds good. Schala’s unflappable presence feels better, an anchoring point he’s been missing. 

But the dreamless sleep he gets that night on the unfolded couch, piled under a heap of offered blankets, is the best part. Mia lingers as he starts dozing and he waves her away, he’ll be fine. He watches her zip away to find Tyr on the Ghost’s sleeping pillow, no doubt they’ll re-open their private comm and talk through everything that’s happened in the past few years they’ve not seen much of each other. 

When finally the only thing Feros could hear were the crickets and the occasional ship flying overhead, he slept. Deeply and heavily enough no dreams crept in, enough that he did not move nor turn in his sleep. Time finally caught up to him, and he felt numb instead of constantly simmering in his rage and his fear. 

He rested. 

\--- 

It was a voice that woke him up, early the next morning. Schala actually talking to herself. Or mumbling as it were, since her voice never could reach any comfortable volume without discomfort. He turns around stiffly, sees her sitting at the kitchen table with a selection of herbs laid out on the table. She is looking at the air next to her. 

He hazily watches the small smile on her face, rare and sweet, and falls back to sleep. 

When he wakes up again she’s still in the kitchen, at the same spot as before and there are no herbs on the table. 

He tosses the covers aside, bare feet pattering on the wooden floor as he goes to her. She doesn’t turn to him, doesn’t even blink as he touches her shoulder gently. 

It’s been a while since he last caught her in a vision and he thinks twice about suppressing her with a small tether of void. He’s not sure if it’s welcome anymore. 

“Schal…? Schal?”, he snaps his fingers in front of her face a couple of times and sees her eyes flicker momentarily and sighs in relief. She’s not completely gone, just distracted. He guides her to the couch to lay down, covers her up and rummages in the cupboard for coffee and tea and _sugar_ and boils enough water to last all day. The first sip of coffee seems to wake him right up and after checking to see if the other exo is still out of it, Feros revels in the silence. Even his feet tapping on the floor are loud.   
  
He starts snooping, opening doors and sniffing around Schala’s workshop, which seems oddly...divided. Not in a sense of space, but neatness. Half of it orderly, with tools and projects tucked away, if a little dirty, and the other half a chaos of screws, plates, papers and pens strewn all over the place.   
  
Feros sips on his sweet coffee as he contemplates the scene, it’s almost like there are two people using the room and his mind goes back to Schala’s comment of the house being haunted. He shivers and moves on.   
  
Next door opens to a bedroom, which looks mostly unused and barren, beyond the bed that’s a mess of sheets and covers and the open wardrobe with a sniper barrel sticking out, as if thrown in haphazardly. He doesn’t linger much in there.   
  
There are two more rooms with doors closed and locked beyond the bathroom, and after a few moments of digging into cupboards and around the house, he can’t find the keys. Feros shrugs and drains the rest of his coffee, no snooping into those rooms without Schala’s permission it seems.   
  
He gets uneasy when he lingers by them anyway, as if there’s people on the other side of the door, waiting for him to knock to be invite him in. He walks off before temptation digs its claws in him. 

He leans against the kitchen door, watches the light filter in through the curtains while he waits for Schala to snap out of her reverie. The world seems to have slowed down, even with the timeline still in danger, it’s actually going well for once. 

A coil of tension loosens in his spine and he slides down to the floor.   
  
He can breathe again. 

\---

There’s a knock on the door.   
  
There’s another knock on the door.   
  
Then Mia is there knocking against his shoulder.   
  
Feros blinks the sleep out of his eyes again and hops to his feet. A quick look at the clock puts them at almost noon and Schala still asleep, snug under the blankets. Mia settles on his shoulder and Feros drags his feet to the door.   
  
He comes face to face with an exo he thinks he might have known in a previous life when he opens the door, and his drowsy mind finally catches up to the fact that he answered the door to someone else’s house like it was nothing. 

His jaw slackens and he just stares at the other person with purple eyes, whose expression is steadily becoming more and more amused until they laugh.   
  
“Young Wolf? I did not expect you to be _here_. You also know our Lady Guardian? Visiting after a long time?”   
  
Mia perks up and floats off his shoulders to zip inside. Feros blinks and his jaw clicks shut. He remembers that voice. 

“Saint-14?” 

Saint perks up with a smile, “It has been a long time since we saw eye to eye, no? People always expect to see the helmet and the armor, a Guardian walking in the streets. But when I visit friends, it’s nicer to be quiet.” 

The Titan walks inside, clasping the Hunter on the shoulder as he passes, other hand holding a bag of...groceries? Feros closes the door and tries to reconcile the Titan clad in silver armor with the purple ribbons with the exo in the tank top and pants tucked in combat boots, walking around the mess that’s the living room. 

“Rough night?” 

Feros snaps back to himself and follows along. 

“Ah, something like it. Night was fine, she was out of it in the morning, but she seemed happy, didn’t wanna pull her out.” 

Saint’s eyes go from Feros back to Schala, unloading the bag on the kitchen table. 

“Is a big burden, to see all that can happen and all that has. Finding happiness when possible is important.” He looks back at the forgotten cup on the floor, the still drawn blinds, back at Feros and chuckles. 

“Woke you up, didn’t I? Apologies, I’ve heard it has been a difficult time for you. Haven’t returned to the City in a long time.” 

Feros rubs at his neck self-consciously, he likes sleeping in but not to the point of people not finding him awake. “It’s fine. I guess I finally managed to wind down a bit...” 

Saint nods, pulls out a carton of eggs and a small variety of vegetables and starts rinsing and chopping them up. The ease with which the man pulls kitchen utensils and ingredients from the cupboards reminds Feros that yes, Schala did tell him that Saint stops by every day, he just didn’t remember. 

Mia and Tyr zip back into the room then and he watches as they pull Saint’s Ghost out and they huddle together, pulling the unwitting victim back between them when it tries to leave. 

He huffs in amusement and walks over to Saint, “Want help?” 

Saint smiles and sets him to beating eggs and pulling down and setting the pan to heat up. 

After a bit Saint nudges him out of the way and drops the finely chopped vegetables in the pan with some salt. “You came back to celebrate, friend? For these Crimson Days.” 

Feros looks up from the sizzling pan that Saint is tossing and blinks. “Crimson… days? I…” 

Saint pauses in his vigorous tossing to pour in the scrambled eggs. “Yes, celebration of love, friendship, partnerships. Shaxx has been making big fuss about it. With flowers. And bows. Loudly.” 

His jaw drops open and closes a couple of times before he clicks it shut. It was Crimson Days _already_? He would have been gone for… well over a year if that was the case. 

Saint throws him a glance and hums. He kills the flame and lets the food sit. The touch at Feros’ elbow is impossibly light. 

“It’s not easy coming back after a long time, I know. Sit, relax, eat, take the time to breathe.” 

He goes from standing in front of the stove dumbly to sitting at the kitchen table and he doesn’t even realise it. His mind tries to process the fact that he’s lost track of time far too easily for his comfort. His chest seizes. 

Saint starts humming a song under his breath and it takes Feros a bit to place it. An old, wayfaring song, from before the City was built. He remembers Tevis trying to sing songs like this one whenever he got drunk. There was a time when a day didn’t pass that Feros didn’t reminisce about Tevis, now he can’t remember the last time he thought of his old friend. 

The clinking of plates getting set on the table snaps him out of his thoughts. Saint is still humming and going over to the couch to nudge Schala awake. He looks down at the food piled up in his plate dumbly. This all feels so surreal. 

Something brushes his shoulder and Feros jumps out of his skin. Saint is dropping in the seat next to him and Schala is floating into the chair across him with a blanket thrown around her shoulders and he still can’t really cement himself in this reality. 

He spends a minute staring at the table before Schala waves in his face. She signs when he looks up, _“How are you?”_

She doesn’t break eye contact, face steady. He doesn’t know how to answer yet, so he just nods. 

Schala frowns but doesn’t push, instead starts eating slowly and turning to sign with her free hand at Saint. _“No pestering Osiris for Crimson Days?”_

The man chuckles deeply and wipes off before responding. “My brother does not celebrate much of anything. Besides, surviving to carry on just to have days like this, with good company and lighter hearts is celebration enough for me. Crimson Days don’t have to come to have this.” 

He turns to Feros and sets his hand between his shoulders, expression softening for no reason that the Hunter can let himself accept. “And there are many things one can celebrate, no?” 

His voice feels stuck screaming in his mind, raging and crying. 

( _WHAT DO I HAVE LEFT_ _TO BE HAPPY ABOUT? EVERY TIME I LET ANYONE IN THEY DIE_ _! I CAN’T SAVE THEM_ _!_ _WHY DID I COME BACK NOW_ _, TO GET_ _ANOTHER_ _TASTE_ _BEFORE IT HAPPENS AGAIN_ _?!_ _WHY, WHY_ _WHY_ _WHYWHYWHWYWHY-)_

He nods. Saint’s eyes close off but don’t look away. He slaps him on the back amiably, “Better get back to eating, food’s better warm.” 

The pressure of Saint’s scrutiny lifts as he turns back to his plate. Feros breathes and turns to his own plate. 

The food is actually good, he realises after a few bites. His eyes light up and he starts eating a bit easier. There’s a foot brushing against his and he spies Schala sneaking glances at him. 

He hears Mia giggle in the other room and his shoulders relax. 

That’s right, he’s not here to wallow in self pity or drown in worry. It’s not what he _does_. He takes care of problems, even if he can’t take care of people. It’s what he’s always done. 

His fork scrapes the bottom and he thinks, maybe he’s just not used to this, going to people for help or company. It’s always the other way around. It’s been that way too long. 

Schala snatches his empty plate and starts clearing the table while the realisation that he just needs some time to settle and learn to accept help sinks in. It sits crooked in his mind, but he’s just so damn tired. Too tired to want to care any more about it. He wants to hear Mia laugh again. 

“It will take time, like all things do.” 

He looks at Saint and finally sees the understanding in his eyes. It’s not as difficult to accept as he thought it’d be. 

Schala rounds the table and turns to him, _“_ _Shaxx_ _wants me in an exhibition match for_ _Crimson Days, will you come with me?”_

Feros blinks, Crucible? He hasn’t stepped foot in the Crucible in years, much less stepping in the Crucible with Schala as a teammate. More often than not, they were in opposing teams. She looks steadily at him. 

He smirks, “Sure thing, firefly.” 

Her answering smile feels radiant.

Saint guffaws. 

“Now _that_ , I want to see!” 

His paranoia might be right, he might lose her. But she’s also right, she’s not gone yet. Saint is right, every day he can still do something good with others is a day worth celebrating. 

What better way than killing each other?

**Author's Note:**

> I am not entirely happy with this to be honest, but it's done and it's there.


End file.
